The notebook I bought last September has a TPM v1.2 chip in it... and I know many current other notebooks do. But TPM is primarily useful in the mobile space, anyway, not on the desktop space where most people keep their machines reasonably physically secure.

At the risk of sounding like a.... person replying to a comment on slashdot, recent recent Macs (Core 2 Duo Macbook Pros etc) do not have the TPM chip installed, only the first Intel Mac generations do. Its totally missing from ioreg on C2D Macs while present in ioreg on CD Macs.

Actually, that's not correct. Bitlocker does not "require" TPM 1.2, it CAN be used without it. You can boot from a USB drive, make a few edits in the local policy, or manually set the 48 digit recovery password just to name a few.

And just about any computer manufactured after January 2006 will have TPM 1.2.

A court order doesn't override the defendant's constitutional rights. If the prosecutor really wants the information badly enough, the defendant can be granted immunity or "use immunity". Then the defendant could be held in contempt of court if he refused to testify, the grant of immunity having negated the possibility of self-incrimination.

A court order doesn't override the defendant's constitutional rights. If the prosecutor really wants the information badly enough, the defendant can be granted immunity or "use immunity". Then the defendant could be held in contempt of court if he refused to testify, the grant of immunity having negated the possibility of self-incrimination.

Even then I believe you can refuse. Imagine a child-obscene picture case, held before a grand jury. If I know there are pictures there that will compromise my image, I don't want to reveal them, even for immunity. The public outrage and the possibility of loosing my reputations is too big. Now, substitute that for your petty (pretty major for some) crime and then talk to me about honestly.

Besides, what is the point of the pictures if I am granted immunity? To incriminate others... so either persuade me or

I thought that part of the Fifth Amendment referred to self-incrimination during testimony (you know, that...nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself... part). I don't think it allows you to refuse to turn over evidence legally requested via a search warrant. If the police/DA have a warrant for the contents of your drive (plaintext/non-encrypted), I'm pretty sure you are legally obligated to give up the key/passphrase.

There is a legal distinction between testimony and material objects like diaries and journals. From what I've read, a court can compel someone to hand over material objects, like a safe, but it can't compel someone to say the combination. This issue came up quite often during Prohibition. Many rum runners kept their business records in code. The government would often seize these records during a raid. The government used their own cryptanalysts to break the codes and testify in court as expert witnesses.

Indeed, it is obvious. IANAL either and while there is some truth to your argument it is mostly false. The fifth amendment applies at any time. If the police go to your house and ask if you killed your wife, your refusal to answer can not be used as evidence of your guilt. If they ask for the combination to your safe, you can claim the fifth amendment and decline to answer.

You can even invoke the fifth amendment as a witness. For example, if the

When Lenny finds a locked door or something with a padlock on it, he'll ask the owner once, nicely, to effect an entry. And if they want to be a prick and not cooperate, out comes the bolt cutters or the ram.

In the UK they can require you to give up your encryption keys. This is one of the reasons you have things like the multiple keys in truecrypt where you have one key with some tame stuff and a second key with your real system. I don't know the case law in the US but would think they can lock you up for contempt in a criminal case or just award the case to the other party in a civil case. Anyway if you really have something to hide the previous mentioned method should work fine or just use a server in ano

In the past, courts have rules that an encryption key is analogous to a physical key, and like a physical key, can be demanded with a warrant.

Does anyone know why they came to that decision rather than treating encrypted computer documents the same way as paper documents (journals, diaries etc) which are written in code? IANAL but AFAIK the precedent with the latter is that they cannot force you to decode them. In both cases they are in possession of the physical document - that they are unable to understand it is their problem.

(This should NOT be modded insightful. It should be modded 'Wrong'. Read the goddamn Wikipedia article before you start modding, especially if you don't know anything about the law.)You misunderstand the use of the 5th Amendment. In its broadest form, it applies only to direct admissions by the defendant. A defendant cannot be ordered to confess, or punished for not doing so, or be forced to provide testimony that amounts to a confession.

The past rulings indicate and its rather clear that the 5th amendment only applies if you hurt yourself with the information disclosed. There is a "Fisher Test" of requirements to get around the 5th:1) evidence exists2) the person has a key for getting/finding the evidence3) producing the key does not link the evidence to the person (aka authentication)Fisher v USIts like you have evidence in your safe but so do other people, so they can force you to open the safe despite the 5th- is my understanding of the

Naturally, the police can attack your security any way their please without your help and can lift your biometrics in many ways without going threw the court and I suspect when that situation is raised they possibly will extend the line of thought started on this case.

Repeat: Something you know, Something you have... Something you know, Something you have...

Actually, in the UK they can compel you. The RIP Act basically says that the police can demand your passwords, and if you don't give them you could be prosecuted and thrown in jail. The key is that the police need to prove you know the password. Obviously, if it's your computer, your account... but it is not clear what happens if you just forgot the password. How can they prove you remember something?

Or if there's no encrypted file to begin with. If I, um, had something to hide, I'd make it as non-obvious as possible that file X is actually an encrypted file to begin with. "Officer, I don't know what that file is or what it's for - it's in that 'windows\system' folder, and I don't know what any of those files do". For all they know, WeatherBug could have installed that file whose contents just happen to not be plain text.

The idea is everything is encrypted. If someone steals my laptop, I don't want them to get into any of my files, see my browsing history, see what drivers I have installed for expensive hardware at my house etc.

I can't believe this didn't get a bite. US citizens aside, this article relates to any other country that uses Vista, so it's a worthwhile topic. Just because one country's constitution states something, doesn't mean that all has been said and done.

If someone uses encryption, then obviously they are trying to hide somthing illegal or unlawful.

In Linux, encryption is done with unusual and special commands in conjuction with mounting a "loop" device to a filesystem; requiring administrator privileges to try to encrypt data like that, and adding to the subversion of a system with evidence of a corrupt administrator.

What kind of administrator would allow encryption on a filesystem? Obviously, a criminal.

Information is meant to be free, and open source. Encryption is somthing we would expect Mycrow$oft to use to help criminals be found by the good god-fearing men and women of the DEA/FBI/CIA/GATT/IMF/IRS just to atone for their sins.

That's not quite the case. Imagine your average information thief. He/she can steal information in one of two ways: online or physically. Now let's say some innocent government or corporate employee left a laptop with sensitive data on it (such as proprietary secrets). Our thief can pick up this laptop, and if it's not encrypted as you suggest because the employee and his/her company are innocent of any criminal activity, the criminal can read the entire contents of the disk.

If someone uses encryption, then obviously they are trying to hide somthing illegal or unlawful.

As someone who works in telecomms security, I find your statement above laughable.

Whilst I agree a lot of people are worried about security to point of paranoia, encryption is usually implemented to *stop* those with criminal intent from getting information you don't want them to see.

About 18 months ago, I worked with a major financial organisation in tracking down someone who was using "man in the middle"

One misconception is that encryption in Vista is turned on "by default." Actually, it is not. In fact, it is not even available in most versions of Vista. Vista is available in five SKUs, only two of which support encryption (a feature known as "BitLocker", or "BitLocker Drive Encryption" - BDE). Vista Home Basic, Media Edition, and Business *do not* support BDE. Vista Enterprise and Ultimate - the two more expensive editions - do support BDE.
Also, encryption is not turned on by default. An important step during encryption involves defining the encryption and decryption keys. This cannot be done by default by someone other than the owner of the system. If it could, then that someone else would be able to gain access to the secure data - exactly what is trying to be controlled.

I used to be concerned about this, because in the end, you have to trust somebody. Trust Microsoft, trust the device driver programmers, trust your AV vendor, trust the TrueCrypt programmers. In the case of OSS, trust that enough eyes are watching, and that they're watching closely enough, and that they're even checking every single update and patch that you automatically install.

It simply is not possible to personally check and verify every piece of code that gets executed on your computer.

Short answer: no.Long answer: no, but which software *can* you trust? If you install, say, Mandriva, how do you know that it's not going to "phone home" any of your data? Oh, sure, there's no such functionality in the source code, but how do you know that the binaries you're running do correspond to the source code you're getting? And while you might think that simply recompiling everything will help, it's not actually going to - Ken Thompson demonstrated this nicely. If you're using the shipped compiler, y

If you're that concerned, do not use binaries provided by anyone else. There are also defences against a compiler-based attack, if you stop to think about it. There is no need to trust Microsoft or Mandriva.

Do you think it's beyond everyone else to not notice if they did? The amount of people paranoid about MS, who'll run it behind eg, a linux firewall, watching all the traffic that goes through during installation etc?

I don't think MS would be able to get away with doing anything like that now, too many eyes on packets comin from Windows.

I see from TFA that they're shitting themselves at the prospect of widespread drive-level encryption. They console themselves with the fact that only the high-end Vista versions support BitLocker.

But in the end, encryption offers only limited protection. If some well-resourced hostile authority wants to take you down, there's endless options for framing you up. For instance, they could mess with your ISP's logs to fabricate http hits to k1dd13 pr0n sites, or infect your box with a bot that hits such sites on your behalf, which will cause the hits without messing with the ISP's logs...

Criminals usually aren't smart enough to enable drive encryption or buy a $400 copy of Windows Vista. They are probably not smart enough to even install TrueCrypt, which is by far the most incredibly easy to use encryption product on the market.And by the way, what kind of bozo puts incriminating evidence on a computer period? Unless they deal in child pornography they wouldn't even have that data on the computer. (Unless you're that one idiot that used Microsoft word to print off a fake suicide note)

I see from TFA that they're shitting themselves at the prospect of widespread drive-level encryption.

Whenever it comes to these things, I find myself in a bit of a quandary. Of course I want various criminals to get busted, but these investigators are essentially relying on poor security to get their information. I generally want computers to have good security. I don't like the idea of people being able to see my personal info or browsing history, but I'm also not really hiding anything.

*mboverload is sad because he hears these arguments from people but doesn't know how to fight against it. Someone help.*

"If you have nothing to hide, then you won't mind taking out a newspaper ad with your SSN, your DOB, your credit card numbers, your mother's maiden name, and your driver's license number. Either you have something to hide, or you'll quickly learn that you had something you should have kept hidden."

If you look through my browser history then you don't respect and trust me.If you don't respect and trust me, than there is something fundamentally wrong with our relationship.If there is something fundamentally wrong with our relationship then I wish to end it. **OR**If there is something fundamentally wrong with our relationship then we need to fix that.

As far as society, and police/government initiatives its the same baseic question of trust and respect. Do we want to live in a police state? What fundame

I've found that the most effective counterargument is to point out that the whole "nothing to hide, nothing to fear" argument is based upon the presumption that the government is infallible and perfectly competent. Sure, I have nothing to hide. However, I do fear the government looking at bits and pieces of my personal data and then coming to an erroneous conclusion about my future behavior because they didn't get the whole picture.Also, I don't like the thought of government being able to make arbitrary

The correct reply to that arguement is: "cool, can I come over to your house and install these Web Cams in your house, specifically, your bedroom and your shower, they are gunna broadcast on the internet 24/7"

Also, demand all government officials (including senators and the president) must be bugged and have their movements and conversation monitored 24/7, and the full details made public, with archives and live feed to ensure that they aren't corrupt. Remember, they won't object if they have nothing

After reading the article (I know we're not supposed to do that) I'm a little confused on if you backup an encrypted volume if the backup is also encrypted. If not, doesn't that defeat the whole purpose of encrypting that data in the first place?

It's existed in the NUL form going right back to early DOS days (and before, in CPM etc I think), which exists whatever directory you're in. Other device names include CON (console), AUX, PRN, COM1, LPT1 etc.

It's existed in the NUL form going right back to early DOS days (and before, in CPM etc I think), which exists whatever directory you're in. Other device names include CON (console), AUX, PRN, COM1, LPT1 etc.

And to really rub your nose in it, Windows won't allow you to create a file or directory anywhere with any of those names. Just what I need from a filesystem: An historically bound list of arbitrary letter combinations that I can't use as a filename anywhere. Oh well, at least it's saved them the tro

It depends on why you're encrypting and how you're backing up. In this case, copying the files to an unencrypted disk will give you unencrypted files.

In short, the purpose of encrypting your hard drive in this way is to prevent hacking from someone who as physical access to the machine. For example, if you give me a standard XP system, I can use a boot CD to reset your passwords. I can boot to another OS and access your files directly. If your system is up and running, Windows will protect your files w

Are you telling me that if you use bitlocker and you copy files from your computer (running the installed version of Windows) to another drive or a network share, you'll get gibberish on the other end? I'll admit that I've never used bitlocker, but if that's true then it's going to be damn near useless for most uses.

You should worry more about the disk cache. Previously opened files are cached in RAM in an unencrypted state.

Firewire ports and PCMCIA slots have direct memory access, so can be used to copy an image of your computer's RAM even if no one is logged in. This can recover useful forensic material even after a reboot cycle, as modern BIOS's don't clear RAM.

It looks like Vista's disk encryption is useless if you switch on the PC and access files.

Part of my job entails working with law enforcement officials in the field of digital forensics. They have told me that the use of any encryption system by criminals is very low, to the point of non-existent. This is fortunate for the Police, as it makes it easier for them to keep these scumbags off the streets (unfortunately a lot of the crime they deal with is child pornography). There are so many barriers to Bitlockers use (TPM, correct version of Vista, off by default etc etc), that its widespread use just doesn't seem likely. If the bad guys aren't using EFS and other encryption systems now, and these are easy to implement, why would they bother of going through the hassle to use Bitlocker? There are also laws being enacted in certain countries to force the bad guy to give up passwords/ keys etc (ie we are going to lock you up until you give it to use so you may as well do it now...).

Fair enough point, and I need to be a bit careful about what I say, but the guys I work with don't normally just grab people at random. If they show up at your door, then they usually already know what they are going to find. The seizure is so that a case can be made and put before a judge / court. They have more than enough work than they can handle now without doing random PC seizures.

Peruse them and you might notice something. Well? Right. A handful deals with the problem of having your notebook stolen, while the majority discusses the effects of it on a search. I.e. more people being concerned of the effects to a search than to having your computer stolen.

Makes me wonder... does it tell me something 'bout the people here or about the governments we live in?

The macintosh home folder security is called "filevault", and uses encryption to encrypt the entire user home folder, where most of the user information is. The actual key to the vault is large (128bit aes?) and is stored at the start of the vault, but the key is encrypted using the password the user provides when it is created. Another copy is stored there, encrypted using the master password's certificate, which is encrypted using the master password. So if you lose your password and lose the master password, the data is truly gone forever, and there is no "back door" at Apple. There's nothing stopping you from deleting the master key, it's one document easily located. There is no known back door to the filevault system, and the system is very careful to point out if you lose the password and master password, your data is irrecoverable. The master key requires you to enter a password because the key itself is also encrypted, so simply having access to the master key certificate is not useful in breaking into a locked vault, because the master password is required still.

From what I have heard, all rumor and third-party, windows' encrypted home folders is worthless from a true security standpoint. I have been told that there is a master key in use similar to the master password in OS X, but that it is not one that the user makes, it comes pre-made from microsoft. No one outside microsoft has the private key to unlock that certificate. So if you lose your password, YOU are screwed, but if microsoft really wanted into your data they could get into it. (or let someone else into it) I don't know if there is a documented way to erase this copy of the image's crypto key encrypted with microsoft's back door password. Also I wonder if an administrator could simply reset the password on the account and then login with the new password to just waltz by the entire security of the system?

How much of this is fact and how much is fiction? We have seen time and time again that security by secrecy and security by "but we would NEVER misuse our master key" is a complete laugh, because (A) the secret ALWAYS gets out, and (B) someone ALWAYS ends up misusing the master key. In this respect I feel sorry for the windows users because the wolves are guarding the sheep.

Sidenote: OS X also has a built-in feature that lets you create a regular encrypted disk image. When you make one of those, the machine's master password is not used to store another encrypted copy of the image key as with filevault, so those disk images have only one actual key. I use this to store a password list on my flash drive because of how easy they are to lose, and I am completely confident that anyone that finds the flash drive will be absolutely unable to access my information. I assume that a 3rd party solution is required for windows users?

Somewhat OT, but I have also been told that it's essentially impossible for even an administrator to just read another user's data on the same hard drive, that they have to "take ownership" of the files to read thm, thus altering the data. Yet viruses apparently can multiply at will, infecting all accounts on the computer. Why is it that the viruses have no problem circumventing windows security while at the same time it's nigh imposible for the administrator to do the same thing? Tha does not make sense.

This is why you should use TrueCrypt with the hidden volume feature. You can, after some extortion, give them your key to the main truecrypt volume, but there is no way to know if there is another volume inside the one you just gave them access to.